Michael Shumate

(a.k.a the Grand Poobah of Success In The Arts)

"The first day of teaching any new students, I tell them to call me Michael, not Professor Shumate or Mr. Shumate. Then I tell them if they forget my name, they can always call me the Grand Poobah. That always gets a laugh from them. It establishes a rapport with my students. They know that even though I have much to teach them, I don’t take myself too seriously. Their respect for me will be earned and ego games are not something we’ll be playing."

That's how Michael teaches. That's how he speaks.

For 22 years Michael Shumate has been teaching at St. Lawrence College in Kingston, Ontario, where he is a Professor of Graphic Design and Illustration. He has taught Color Theory, Beginning, Intermediate and Advanced Illustration including Computer Illustration, Branding Design and Art History.

In addition to teaching, for more than 40 years Michael has been a graphic designer and commercial illustrator, a conceptualizer and writer, an organizer and motivator. For the seven years before becoming a teacher, he was Senior Designer/Illustrator for a mid-sized design studio and advertising agency. Michael’s design experience extends to all areas of graphic design including advertising, corporate identity, institutional design, annual reports, display and interpretive center design as well as print and web design. As a stock illustrator with TheImageBank.com (now owned by GettyOne - search under Shumate), and Theispot.com (search under Shumate), Michael’s illustration work has been used all over the world for such clients as British Airways Magazine, Kelley Services, Macmillan McGraw-Hill publishers and Business Week. He is fluent in many illustration styles and in virtually every medium: oil, acrylic, pastel, pen and ink, watercolor, as well as the digital media Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. For a wider sampling of Michael’s design and illustration work, see the stock illustration sites mentioned above or www.VisualEntity.com.

Michael has been a popular speaker for youth conferences and groups as well as a guest lecturer and presenter for adult audiences on a range of topics including those embodied in Success In The Arts: What It Takes to Make It in Creative Fields.

Besides all that, he is the son of an artist and a musician, husband to a music teacher, and father to more musicians, a writer, a fine woodworker, a photographer and two more studied filmmaking at university. The principles that Michael teaches apply equally to all of the arts. If you wish to download a Folio-Resume of Michael's, click here

All images on this page © A. Michael Shumate 2006 (or earlier)